News of the University of Washington Department of English

Autumn 2002

In English is published annually for alumni and friends
of the University of Washington Department of English to encourage interest
in and support for the University of Washington. To be put on the mailing
list to receive a snailmail copy of In English, e-mail Cheryl Mathisen
(cherylm@u.washington.edu).

It is common knowledge that state support for the University of Washington
has dropped steadily over the last twenty years – now down to a mere 14%
of operating costs – and that an educational crisis is in the works, particularly
in the Humanities, and particularly in English. As detailed in the May 17
issue of the Seattle Post Intelligencer, the English department is
losing faculty, its core strengths in danger. Still, it is not too late.
Our department, like others in the University, must now call on its alumni
and friends to make a difference. Our needs have never been greater, and
we cannot maintain our excellence without your involvement of time, talent,
and financial support.

Your gifts, large and small, make an enormous difference. For example,
only a few $35 donations can underwrite a graduate student/faculty colloquium;
$100 pays the honorarium for a guest lecturer; $500 enables a graduate student
or faculty member to present a paper at a distant conference; $1000 brings
a major scholar to Seattle for a lecture, reading, or seminar. We invite
you to renew your support of the English Department, which you can now do
on-line by visiting our development website. We hope that you will do
so. Your generosity is deeply appreciated.

New Chair’s NotesDick Dunn

I think of myself as new chair, even though my actual chair is the one I
have used as a faculty person for the past five years and even though I have
served two previous terms as chair. But most of all, I find myself committed
to the “new” which appears in nearly every column of this newsletter describing
the opportunities and challenges we face. I have a few thoughts about the
opportunities and about the real challenge of how best to recognize and benefit
from them.

From my reading of much recent UW creative and scholarly work that
is listed here, our most challenging opportunity is to sustain and utilize
its excellence. Marshall Brown, in “Rethinking the Scale of Literary History,”
says that “literature is a chronicle of successive eternities.” Such a view
contextualizes the most positive connotations of “new” in the way Keats did
when mentioning the Grecian Urn’s “happy melodist, unweared, / For ever piping
songs, for ever new.” It is our faculty’s ongoing new work in the pages written,
students taught, and many professional and public services rendered that we
most cherish and must sustain. The growing number of endowments and of annual
contributions for faculty, program, and student support are vitally important,
and the new Nancy K. Ketcham endowment could
not be more timely.

Through new efforts to increase both public programs and communication,
we are acknowledging and demonstrating the impact of alumni and friends
generosity. If you are living close enough to attend the twice-quarterly
English Forums that begin this fall, please join us. Wherever you are, become
electronically present through the new alumni news section
of our web page. However recent your undergraduate education, we are
interested in how well it has served you and in what it might have included
to meet your needs while here and since. This year we are reconsidering the
undergraduate major. Intellectually and pedagogically, this is an essential
calibration of curriculum with the expertise and interests of faculty. Because
we are well past the decades-old question of what, besides teach, one can
do with an English major, our programs must serve the many career options
that our graduates have found. Here, your advice can be very useful, and I
urge you to provide it as soon as possible (email our undergraduate program
director, Professor Caroline Simpson (csimpson@u.washington.edu).

Following the recommendations of the English Department Chair Search
Committee, Dean David C. Hodge and Divisional Dean Michael Halleran of the
College of Arts and Sciences announced a national search for a new chair.

In his letter to the department authorizing the search, Hodge notes
that “Searches for external chairs can be problematic, of course, and there
are faculty in the department who could serve well in the role of chair.
However, a chair resulting from a national search will bring new energy,
vision, and perspective at a critical time for the department. We want the
English Department to be a robust center of scholarship and teaching, central
to the humanities and to the broader range of disciplines within the College
of Arts and Sciences.”
Professor Richard Dunn has agreed to serve as chair for at least
one year while the search is being conducted. As former chair of English
from 1982-1992, Professor Dunn brings a great deal of experience and good
judgment to the position. These will be crucial in the coming years, as the
department faces issues raised by the departmental strategic plan, by the
chair search committee report, and by the self study and exit interview from
the ten-year program review.

The search committee appointed by Dean Hodge includes Diana Behler
(committee chair) from Germanics, Carolyn Allen and Anis Bawarshi from the
Department of English, Galya Diment from the Slavic Department, and John Keeler
from Political Science.

People often say that administrative jobs are thankless positions.
I’ve been fortunate to have not only served as chair of the Department of
English for five years from July 1997 to July 2002, but also fortunate to
hear the thanks and gratitude of many of my colleagues, students, alumni,
and friends of the department. It’s now my turn to say thanks to all who helped
me through my five-year term.

Some people think we live and work in an ivory tower, immune to the
pressures of the so-called “real world.” I’ve found it’s impossible to separate
my work from real life. I took on the job of chair at a difficult time
in my life. Just after accepting the position, my wife, Vicki, passed away
after a four-year battle with cancer. Former Dean of Arts and Sciences, John
Simpson, offered whatever support I needed. I am grateful to him for his
faith in me and I am grateful to Professors Malcolm Griffith and David McCracken
for taking on extra administrative work in the first few months of my term
as chair. Current Dean, David Hodge, and Divisional Dean Michael Halleran
continued that marvelous support and faith throughout my term.

I’m not a person who delegates work easily, but in that first year
I came to rely on the department staff, department program directors, and
faculty to do their jobs as well as help me do mine. There are, of course,
too many people to thank individually in this limited space. Let me just
say I approached our various programs and offices with questions and problems
and I received prompt solutions, facts, numbers, charts, and options. The
staff in the main department office and our advising office worked beyond
the call of duty during and after a strike by UW teaching assistants.

I was fortunate to inherit, from our former chair, Tom Lockwood,
an energetic and hard-working staff. I was told by other department chairs
that our department administrator, Susan Williams, was the best administrator
at the UW. That statement was proven true when Susan crunched numbers and
massaged budgets as if she were the fiscal version of Seigfried and Roy,
while I spent money like the Department of Defense.
Through my five-year term, my assistant, Cheryl Mathisen, was the very definition
of loyalty and hard work. She managed too many faculty searches and thousands
of job applications without a single mistake. She handled the confused and
unpredictable schedule of department chair with too many meetings, too many
memos to write, and too many crises.

Faculty, staff, and students made it easy for me to come to work
everyday for the last five years. Professor Richard Dunn taking over as chair
made it easy for me to leave the job. I’m beginning a year-long sabbatical
leave (and my 30th year of teaching), during which I hope to complete a new
novel and complete work on the film version of my previous novel. Following
my sabbatical years, I’m scheduled to teach UW courses in Rome and London,
teach at the University of Tuebingen in Germany as part of a faculty exchange,
and teach at the University of Lyon in France. Sounds like the ivory tower?
Hardly, but there is a happy ending. Two years ago I remarried, and my wife
Erin and I are expecting a baby—the first for both of us—just after the beginning
of the autumn quarter. I think changing diapers might be the very definition
of the non-ivory tower real world. And, …talk about a thankless job!

We are delighted to announce that English Department alumnae Nancy
K. Ketcham (BA 1974) has responded to the rising public awareness of the financial
challenges our program faces as a result of declines in state support (see
“Strapped UW Losing English Professors,” Seattle Post Intelligencer, May
17, 2002). Nancy (Nan to her many friends) has pledged $250,000 to the department
to endow the Nancy K. Ketcham Professorship in English. Funds from this endowment
will augment professorial pay, research and publishing resources, and other
basic needs that have gone increasingly unmet in recent years.

“With over 55 faculty in the department, this establishes our fourth
endowed professorship,” notes Dick Dunn, department chair. “It is an extremely
generous, far-sighted gift that makes another step toward our hoped-for
future in which we can retain our best faculty talent here, for generations
of students to come. We are all so grateful to Nan for making this outstanding
gift.”

“I just love the department,” says Nan, a life-long resident of Seattle
as well as a continuing student at the University. “After we raised
our family, I’ve been able to return to take more of the department’s courses
through the Access Program. I’ve done this for many years, and it has returned
the joy of my days as a fulltime student. I am so pleased that I can make
this gift, for we do need to make certain this department remains one of
the very best, whatever its challenges may be.

The annual UW Career Week event was selected as an Outstanding
Institutional Advising Program Winner by the National Academic Advising
Association (NACADA). This quality advising program was chosen as one of
5 programs to be honored with this award in nationwide competition. Two English
Department advisers, Melissa Wensel and Kimberly Swayze, serve
as members of the steering committee, co-chaired by Susan Templeton (Center
for Career Services) and Don Gallagher (UW Alumni Association). Melissa has
been involved with the planning of this university-wide event for the past
three years and worked since 1992 on the event’s more modest predecessor,
the Liberal Arts Career Seminar series; Kimberly joined the planning team
in 2001.

UW Career Week is designed to help students and young alumni answer
that perennial question: “What am I going to do with my major?” Career Week
provides over 50 free panels, workshops, and presentations on specific fields
and career development topics; the centerpiece Husky Career Lunch; and a keynote
address by a prominent role model from the academic or business community.
Nearly 3,000 students participated in Career Week 2002, learning to make more
meaningful connections between their undergraduate educations and the lives
they will lead after graduation. Drawing on the talents of academic advisers
from over 50 academic programs, career counselors, and alumni relations professionals,
Career Week is a model of campus-wide collaboration.

Careerists at work! National Award winning Career Week steering
committee, including the English Department's Melissa Wensel (top, 5th from
right) and Kimberly Swayze (front, left).

Professors Kate Cummings, John Webster, and Lecturer Elizabeth Simmons-O’Neill,
winners of the Department of English Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching
Award, take part in a presentation that highlights the core of their teaching.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24
5:00-6:30 PM
PARRINGTON 309, THE FORUM

II. “ME, MYSELF, AND I: THE SELF IN WRITING”

Professors Linda Bierds and David Shields from our Creative Writing
faculty, offer their views on the range of authorial ego investments in
the writing of “non-fiction” and poetry.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21
5:00-6:30 PM
PARRINGTON 309, THE FORUM

Friends and alumni are cordially invited to attend both these
special department presentations..

The Department of English is pleased to welcome two new Assistant Professors
this year:

Gillian Harkins has a BA from Wellesley
College and received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley
this year. Her dissertation, “Legal Fantasies: Regulating the real in
Contemporary U.S. Narratives of Incest,” was directed by Judith Butler and
Saidiya Hartman. Her teaching interests include modern and contemporary American
literature, female novelists, autobiography, trauma, psychoanalysis, narrative
theory, feminist and queer theory, and citizenship.

Yasuko Kanno fills the position in the
MATESOL and Applied Linguistics programs vacated by Heidi Riggenbach. She
was a visiting professor of applied linguistics at the Monterey Institute
of International Studies last year. Kanno received her Ph.D. in education
in 1996 from the University of Toronto. She also has an MA in linguistics
and a BA in French from Keio University, Tokyo. Her dissertation, “There’s
No Place Like Home: Japanese Returnees’ Identities in Transition,” was
directed by Jim Cummins.

MFA graduates enjoy their moment of glory, and a party to help
them remember.

MFA Graduation 2002

“That was one of the best department functions I’ve attended.”
“Great celebration.” “What a party, man!” These are only a sampling
of the appreciative comments overheard in the hallways of Padelford the day
after the graduation celebration for the 2002 MFAs in creative writing. The
ceremony and reception held on June 6 was organized by creative writing students
with funds from the James T. Lee Endowment.

Celebration highlights included a rousing version of “Pomp and Circumstance”
on the pipe organ in the Walker-Ames room of Kane Hall to set the stage
for readings by each of the graduates. Shawn Wong, department chair,
and Maya Sonnenberg, director of creative writing, were the hosts for the
evening. Their duties included anointing each graduate with Mardi Gras
beads and a graduation tassel. Each student gave a 4-minute reading.
Creative writing faculty and staff were recognized with grateful acknowledgements
submitted by the graduates. Family members and friends were thanked
for both their emotional and financial support, and everyone enjoyed champagne,
good food, and camaraderie.

Kathleen Alcala (MA 1985), David Guterson (BA 1978, MA 1982), and
Priscilla Long (MFA 1990) will begin a series of classes for writers this
fall for Field’s End, a Bainbridge Island writers organization. The class
series is affiliated with the Bainbridge Public Library. Winter courses
will be taught by Long, Michael Byers, Carole Glickfeld, and Nick O’Connell
(MA 1985, PhD 1996).

Kristin Anderson (BA 2002) received the Western Regional Honors Conference
Award in poetry. This fall she begins an English teaching assistantship
at two Austrian high schools sponsored by the Fulbright Commission.

Janet Ellerby (PHD 1989) is the author of Intimate Reading:
The Contemporary Women’s Memoir (Syracuse 2001). She is currently an Associate
Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

Roger B. Fanning’s (BA 1985) new book of poetry, Homesick,
was published by Penguin 2002.

Lydia Fisher (PhD 2001) has accepted a three-year appointment at the
University of Pennsylvania.

Conseula Francis (PhD 2002) has accepted a tenure-track position at
The College of Charleston.

Tammy L. Greenwood (MFA 1996) has written a new novel, Undressing
the Moon, St. Martin’s Press, 2002.

Elaine Tuttle Hansen (PhD 1975) is the new President of Bates College
in Maine.

David Hennessee (PhD 2001) is a Lecturer at California Polytechnic
State University.

Duane Kelly (BA 1974), founder of Pacific Fishing Magazine
and chairman of Salmon Bay Expositions, had his first full-length play, Rousseau
Hobbes, selected for two readings this past year—at Ensemble Studio
Theatre in New York and at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez,
Alaska.

Jing Liu (PhD 2001) will begin teaching at Ocean University of Quingdao
this Fall.

Patrick McEvoy (BA 2002) won eight of the eleven possible awards at
the fourth annual ASUW Student Film Festival.

David McKay (BA 1984), English teacher at Aberdeen High School, was
named “Washington State Teacher of the Year.”

Sandi Sonnenfeld (MFA 1989) published her first book, This is How
I Speak: The Diary of a Young Woman, Impassio Press, LLC, 2002.

Daniel Smith (MFA 2002) has been named one of the fiction winners
in the national Associated Writing Programs (AWP) Intro Journals Project.

David Snyder (BA 2002) has accepted a job as Producer for Rewind,
the weekend news and comedy show on National Public Radio.

Melvin Sterne (BA 2001) is Senior Editor and publisher of Carve
Magazine, (www.carvezine.com)
one of the world’s most popular web-based fiction magazines, read by more
than 4,000 readers per month in 40 different countries.

Johanna Stoberock (MFA 1998) has sold her first novel to Norton. City
of Ghosts should be on the shelves in March 2003.

Richard Tracey (BA 1972, PhD 1989), Vice President of Product Development
for Bridges Learning, writes a monthly column for “Union Jack,” America’s
only national British newspaper.

Emily Warn (MA 1982), Acting Publisher of Copper Canyon Press and
author of two books of poetry, The Leaf Path and The Novice Insomniac,
presented a nature poetry workshop this fall at Padilla Bay National Estuarine
Research Reserve.

Jennifer Wyatt (MA 1977, PhD 1985) and Laura Kastner (clinical professor
of Psychiatry at the UW) have written The Launching Years: Strategies
for Parenting from Senior Year to College Life, Three Rivers Press,
2002.